Day 27: Jelly Roll

I was really excited to make this cake, because it is a big hit with my family and I’ve always been kind of intimidated by the idea of making it. My baking confidence has increased a lot since starting this blog, so I felt like I could tackle it!

My English husband tells me that this doesn’t qualify as a cake — “It’s a pudding, dear!” — but whatever. It’s a rolled up cake and that’s all there is to it!

Recipe courtesy of Allrecipes.com.

The Recipe

1 cup sifted cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
3/4 cup white sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons 2% milk
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar for
dusting
1 cup strawberry jam

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Line a 10×15 inch jellyroll pan with parchment paper.
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. In a large bowl, beat eggs and sugar with an electric mixer until thick and pale, about 5 minutes. Stir in the vanilla and milk. Stir in the dry ingredients gradually. The batter will be thin. Pour into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until the center springs back when pressed lightly. Don’t over bake, or it may crack.
4. Generously dust a clean dish towel with confectioners’ sugar. Turn the cake out onto the towel, and peel off the parchment paper. Gently roll up the cake using the towel, and let cool for about 10 minutes.
5. Unroll the cake, and spread an even coating of jam onto the top. Roll the cake back up into a tight spiral, and remove the towel. Dust with confectioners’ sugar before serving.

My Alterations

I cut the amounts in half, mainly because I remembered to this time! I need to keep doing that. The recipe wasn’t a simple mix it together and throw it in the oven sort of thing, but it was still pretty simple to put together. The cake rose a lot more than I expected, and it stuck to the baking paper a bit, but I think that was because I got sidetracked with the children and peeled the paper off after the cake cooled for a few minutes.

I think the amount of jam required for this cake is crazy. I just spread some jam on the cake like I would on toast, and probably used about 1/4 cup, if that. I didn’t measure.

The Result

This is a very photographic cake:

I was so pleased with how easy it was to put together, and even though the outside cracked a bit when I rolled it up, I think it is very visually appealing.

The cake itself tastes much like the Victoria Sponge that I made back in the beginning of the month, and is very light. It’s a snacky sort of cake.

The Verdict

I love it! I really enjoyed baking it, and plan on reusing this recipe in the very near future for my children’s school cake table. This recipe will be regularly featured in my home, once we are done eating the cakes I already have in my freezer….

The Rating

5/5

Simple to put together, surprisingly easy to roll up, with a very visually pleasing result. Pretty and tasty. You can’t go wrong there!

Edited to Add: This cake recipe is being added to The Domestic Goddess blog’s Sugar High Fridays #50: Rolled Cakes edition.

Day 26: Amazing Corn Cake

I thought this recipe looked interesting. Corn cake? Surely that is only an ingredient for spicy bread! So I thought I’d try it out.

Recipe from recipe-ideas.co.uk.

The Recipe

1 can (17 ounces) cream-style corn
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp baking powder
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped nuts caramel frosting:
4 tbsp butter or margarine
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
2 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar (or mo, re)

Directions

In a mixing bowl, combine corn and sugars. Add eggs and oil; beat
until well blended. Combine dry ingredients; add to batter and mix
well. Stir in raisins and nuts. Pour into a greased 1 3-in. x 9-in. x
2-in. baking pan. Bake at 350! for 30-35 minutes or until cake tests
done. Cool thoroughly. For frosting, bring butter and brown sugar to
a boil over medium heat. Remove from the heat. Stir in milk. Stir in
confectioners’ sugar until frosting is desired consistency. Frost
cooled cake. Yield: 12-15 servings. From the files of Al Rice, North
Pole Alaska. Feb 1994

My Alterations

I actually managed to find creamed corn in my grocery store; I swear that at Thanksgiving time last year, it could not be found anywhere! Perhaps there are more Americans living around here than I thought. I was pleased to find it; this meant I didn’t have to make creamed corn myself just for a cake. Whew!

I didn’t have a pack of raisins on their own, so I used “mixed dried fruit.” This is a combination of raisins, sultanas, and candied orange peel. Possibly something else, but I’m not getting up to look right now.

I made the frosting as stated in the recipe. I was feeling adventurous, what can I say.

The Result

I had forgotten how gross creamed corn looks and smells. When I dumped that can into the bowl, I was really, really tempted to forget this recipe entirely and try something different. Ugh.

I stuck it out, though, and the final batter didn’t taste half bad. The sugars and spices cut down on the gooey corn taste and texture, so that was a relief.

The frosting got really hard when cool, which makes a change from the runny glazes that I normally end up making! It is overpoweringly sweet, but it had a very strong caramel taste to it. The recipe makes far too much icing (as usual) and I only ended up using half of what I made.

The Verdict

Thankfully, this cake doesn’t taste bad at all. Like I said, I was really concerned about the outcome when I opened that can of creamed corn, but the final product was good. I can’t eat more than a small piece, though — the cake is very rich, and the icing is even richer. It would probably taste great alongside a cup of tea or coffee, but I don’t drink them so someone will have to try it out and let me know!

The Rating

3/5

It’s not bad, as such, but I really don’t like it much. Luckily the creamed corn taste isn’t very strong and works well with the other ingredients. Anyone willing to pay for shipment for the rest of the cake in my freezer, you are welcome to it!

Technicalities.

Just registering the blog with Technorati.

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/u3eaady5bq” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

Huh. The code doesn’t work. Anyone know how to fix this?

Day 4: The Perfect Fairy Cake Recipe

As an American living in England, I am used to a certain way of baking, and I haven’t wrapped my head around the idea of weighing all my ingredients. I have a kitchen scale, but the battery ran out and I haven’t bothered to replace it. Personally, I just prefer using cups and teaspoons. It’s also easier for me to alter a recipe or double/halve it if it’s in American measurements.

But, since I live here, and sometimes American ingredients are hard to come by, I will make the attempt from time to time to use an English recipe. Today, I attempted to make fairy cakes (cupcakes) with my children. In theory, it is an easy recipe, and my kids had a blast creaming sugar, breaking eggs, and mixing batter, but I messed it up. Big time.

Taken from iVillage website.

The Recipe

• 125g / 4 1/2 oz softened butter

• 125g / 4 1/2 oz caster sugar

• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 125g / 4 1/2 oz self-raising flour

• 2 tbsp milk

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas mark 5. Either butter the tin or place the paper cases in the holes (see above). In a mixing bowl beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. You can use an electric whisk or a wooden spoon.

2. Add the beaten egg, a little at a time, whisking to incorporate, then beat in the vanilla.

3. Sift in half of the flour and fold into the mixture. Add the milk and the rest of the flour and fold until well combined.

4. Spoon into the tin and bake for 12 minutes or until risen and golden on top. Allow to cool for ten minutes on a rack before removing from the tin.

My Alterations

So, without the means to weigh my ingredients, I thought I could wing it with a half cup of each of the main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour) and stick to the same measurements for everything else. I failed to take into consideration that flour weighs a LOT LESS than butter, so we used far too much butter for these cakes. Far, far too much.

We followed the rest of the recipe as closely as possible with two young children in charge of the mixing. Wooden spoons all around; even if I had an electric whisk, there’s no way I would have let my 5 year old and 3 year old anywhere near one!

The children put decorations on the cakes before baking – mostly multicoloured sprinkles and little silver balls. I find it’s easier to bake the sprinkles into the cake itself than it is to make icing and do it after the cakes have cooled.

The Results

I didn’t notice anything amiss in the batter when we were spooning it into the paper cup liners; it wasn’t until after they were finished baking that I noticed the paper liners looked really greasy. My heart sank; I knew I messed up the recipe.

The cakes tasted very greasy when warm, and only less so when cooled. My kids didn’t mind it, and the cakes have now gone into the freezer for storage. These cakes will probably be reserved for kids’ treats only, depending on how well they hold up frozen.

The only redeeming quality of the cakes were the batch with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top before baking. When eaten warm, they tasted like delicious doughnuts. When eaten cold, not so much. Ah well.

The Verdict

I totally messed up this recipe. I’m sure the cakes would have turned out “perfect” if not for my bungling, so their greasy taste is all my fault. Luckily, my kids didn’t seem bothered, and it was a nice way to spend a rainy afternoon with them. Sometimes baking isn’t just about how the finished product turns out.

The Rating

2/5

The only passable batch were the cinnamon sugar ones, and they only tasted good when warm. This recipe will probably be reattempted at some point, and made correctly!

Day 2: Black Magic Cake

Recipe taken from Allrecipes website. I adore this website. The search engine is very easy to use, and you can even search by ingredients rather than recipe name. The ratings system is very reliable, and I like reading through user reviews, gleaning ideas and inspiration from their experiences with the recipes. I found this recipe by searching for cakes with buttermilk in the ingredients list, because I had to use mine up and couldn’t think of anything else to do with it. Recipe is reproduced as it appears on the website.

The Recipe

INGREDIENTS

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups white sugar
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup strong brewed coffee
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two 9 inch round cake pans or one 9×13 inch pan.
2. In large bowl combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the center.
3. Add eggs, coffee, buttermilk, oil and vanilla. Beat for 2 minutes on medium speed. Batter will be thin. Pour into prepared pans.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 to 40 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes, then remove from pans and finish cooling on a wire rack. Fill and frost as desired.

My Alterations

The major alteration I had to make in this recipe was the coffee. I’m not a coffee drinker, and it was a bit of a head scratcher trying to think up a replacement. Coffee is pretty much just flavoured water, so I couldn’t replace the liquid with milk or cream. In the end, I chose to use peppermint flavouring. I put about a teaspoon into a cup of water, and carried on from there.

The Results

When mixing the dry ingredients, be careful. If you are heavy-handed like me, you’ll end up with flour all over your clothes! (whoops) I’m used to mixing the wet ingredients first and then adding dry ingredients a little at a time.

The recipe states that the batter will be thin, but I thought it was pretty average. It was thinner than the Carrot Cake batter, but there weren’t any chunks in the batter bulking it out like the other cake. However, there was a lot more batter than I expected. I didn’t want to overfill my round cake tins, so I ended up having to use three tins instead of two. I baked them for 25 minutes or so, checking on them every few minutes until I was happy they were done.

The cake turned out wonderfully. It is very moist and rich, but the chocolate flavour isn’t overpowering. The watered-down peppermint gives the cake a slight mint aftertaste, but it’s hardly noticeable.

I don’t usually go for frosting on my cakes. I’m not very good at making it, and I prefer the (shockingly) expensive store-bought stuff anyway, so frosting is a rarity. My husband saw the three layers stacked on top of each other with no decoration, and decided to make some Dream Whip for the cake. It’s very similar to Cool Whip, but it comes in powder form so you have to add milk and whip it up. I spread the dream whip onto each layer, along with some blackcurrant jam, except for the top which was dream whip on its own.

The other downside to frosting is that the cake has to live in the fridge for it to keep. My cakes go stale very fast in the fridge, and I don’t really like eating cold cake. But that’s just me.

The Verdict

This is a great chocolate cake. The peppermint mixed with blackcurrant jam was a bit odd, but not unpleasant or anything. If I did it again with peppermint, I would do a chocolate sauce to replace the jam; that would have finished it off nicely.

I don’t think I’ll make it again, though, simply because I can’t think of a decent substitute for the cup of coffee. There is already vanilla in the recipe, so that’s out… perhaps lemon would work? Melted chocolate? However, if you are a coffee drinker, this cake would be perfect for you.

The Rating

3/5

I gave this cake three stars simply because of my coffee troubles. It’s a shame, because it’s easily worth four stars otherwise!